


Bite Your Tongue Until it Tastes Like Blood

by ifimightchime



Category: The Bifrost Incident - The Mechanisms (Album)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 20:13:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17874089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifimightchime/pseuds/ifimightchime
Summary: Things said and unsaid in the last, strange stretch of time before the Ratatosk Express reaches its destination.





	Bite Your Tongue Until it Tastes Like Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Written, though never posted, for the halfamoon prompt "half the sky".
> 
> Title from Florence + The Machine's _Are You Hurting the One You Love?_ , which was on repeat while I wrote this.

Hours and minutes feel almost the same ticking by, dripping slowly away with the blood that trickles through the line in Loki's heart. Sigyn doesn't know if it's been days, weeks, or years here together, just the two of them. Someday Loki's body will give up, the flow of her blood will trickle into nothingness, and Sigyn will be here alone with whatever comes after; but until then, time stretches and warps around them. She doesn't know if that's the solitude and silence getting into her head, or something about the rituals written into the gears around them, the same strange bending of the world that allowed the Ratatosk to promise a three-day trip between the stars.

It doesn't matter to her. If these are the last moments she'll have with Loki, if this is all the time she'll have her back for, she'll take whatever she can get.

Loki is quieter and quieter as time stretches on, the odd noise of pain all she has left these days. The silence will likely be easier on her in her deteriorating state, but Sigyn misses the sound of her voice. For years she'd had nothing of her wife but dreams, and now that Loki's here, Sigyn can't hear her, can't let go of the line she's holding in place to touch her, can't do anything but stand her and watch her die bit by bit. It's as cruel as it is kind to have her back for this, but that's still kinder than she'd ever thought she'd get.

She doesn't say any of that to Loki; it's not her place to feel guilty over any of this. Odin is the only one to blame, and if there's any justice in the sky, the creatures Odin called on ripped her to shreds and she felt every second of it.

She sings, instead, old songs of resistance and of friendship, songs to keep the spirits up. Hums, when her voice starts to crack. Talks sometimes, soft words that hardly mean anything, because to say anything important -- _I missed you, it almost killed me, it felt like somebody had torn apart the fabric of the world when I thought you'd died, like half the sky had suddenly disappeared and nobody else could see it_ \-- is to hurt Loki, and Sigyn would rather let this train reach its mark and end the world now than give Loki one more thing to hurt over.

"I love you," she says most of all, and though Loki doesn't answer anymore, she smiles through the pain clouding her face, and Sigyn doesn't need her to say a word.


End file.
